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Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Torun (CoCA) presents Theatre of Life

Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Torun (CoCA) presents Theatre of Life, an exhibitionon view through 16 September 2012.

Life, life itself… is the absolute art!
When Yves Klein pronounced these words for the first time they were highly provocative. Not only did they undermined conventional notions of art, they also anticipated all those artistic strategies which expanded, to the highest extent, the boundaries of art.

Ana Prvacki, Do It Yourself Chivalry (video still), 2009. Courtesy the artist and Lombard Fried Projects, NY

Theatre of Life is dedicated to artistic practices which looked for confluence between art, music, dance, and theatre. Performance, body art, and all those tendencies which put the focus on the action and on the body (of the artist) as the subject and the object of the artwork are the point of departure for the exhibition that aims to explore ways in which younger generations are addressing the same topics. Anarchic, freeing, and heroic gestures of the art of the ’60s and ’70s, their theatricality and subversiveness still echo in the practices of the younger generations, even though the emphasis today is more on repetition than on uniqueness and on the re-enactment as the strategy for expressing the new.

Why redo? Why re-perform? What are the motivations that drive artists, especially younger ones, to re-visit works/actions done decades ago? This is one, but not the only focal point of the exhibition. Another explores dichotomies: action/inactivity, motion/stillness, presence/absence. Silence, slowness, minimal gestures are common features recognizable in the works of younger performers and this exhibition investigates how reduced expressive language is capable of producing intense and involving artistic statements.

Departing from topical works by Yoko Ono, VALIE EXPORT, Marina Abramovic, and Natalia LL, this exhibition develops like a voyage through the multiplicity of “bodyscapes,” which might be static or in motion, live or on film. It is also a journey through challenging and provocative statements through which contemporary artists (Cattelan, Beecroft, Vezzoli, Kozyra) addressed conventions of patriarchal society, political or religious authorities, sexual freedoms, and art-taboos. The show is enriched by a monumental work by Partrick Tuttofuoco, Chinese Theatre—an auditorium in which screened selection of interconnected works by John Baldessari, Joao Onofre, Jonathan Monk, and Pierre Bismuth function as exhibition within an exhibition.

Artists: John Cage, Yoko Ono, Marina Abramović, VALIE EXPORT, Natalia LL, John Baldessari, Neša Paripović, Ulay, Marek Sobczyk, Katarzyna Kozyra, Maurizio Cattelan, David Michalek, Pierre Bismuth, Jonathan Monk, Vanessa Beecroft, João Onofre, Francesco Vezzoli, Gil Kuno, Partick Tuttofuoco, Nezaket Ekici, Pilvi Takala, Marlene Haring, Ana Prvački, Mihoko Ogaki, Malin Ståhl, Branko Milisković, Francesco Fonassi, Nicola Ruben Montini, Lerato Shadi, Maks Cieślak

Curated by Dobrila Denegri.

Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Torun (CoCA)
Waly gen. Sikorskiego 13
87-100 Torun, Poland
csw.torun.pl

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